NYTimes Editorial Board Calls for Education Reform

The union must also let go of the unspoken presumption that every teacher is entitled to a job for life.

Pretty strong editorial, which will surely be rejected by teachers and their union. But, isn't this just common sense reform?

Here's a taste:

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will take office facing the need to forge new labor agreements with the unions that represent nearly all of New York City’s 300,000 municipal workers. The largest of these, the United Federation of Teachers, is in a particularly sour mood. Representing 40 percent of the city’s work force, the union has been without a contract since 2009.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed, starting in 2010, that all new union contracts get a three-year freeze in base pay, to be followed by two years of raises at 1.25 percent each. During his campaign, Mr. de Blasio said that a retroactive pay raise — dating back to the expiration of the last contract — would be possible only if offset by cost savings. That’s a good start. But any sort of raise will require concessions in exchange. He will need to press the union to loosen work rules that stifle innovation and favor senior teachers over younger ones who may in fact be more talented. The union must also let go of the unspoken presumption that every teacher is entitled to a job for life. Here are some key issues:

SENIORITY Seniority trumps everything and is treated as a proxy for excellence. Under current rules, a school that has an enrollment shortfall or budget problem and has to cut one of its five math teachers cuts the least senior teacher, period. In progressive systems like the one in Washington, D.C., which has made big gains on federal assessment tests, decisions about which teachers to cut are based on a combination of factors, including how they stack up on evaluations and whether they possess special skills. The goal is to keep the most talented teachers.

Similarly, the salary schedule in New York is calculated to reward longevity, requiring 22 years to get to the top level. Teachers are also rewarded for work toward advanced degrees, but this coursework does not necessarily have any bearing on how poorly or well they teach.

Meanwhile, younger teachers start out with relatively low salaries and are at risk of leaving the system for higher pay elsewhere. The scales should be rebalanced so that teachers who are judged highly effective under the new evaluation system can move up quickly in the pay scale. Highly effective teachers should be paid more for teaching in areas with shortages or in high-need schools that have difficulty attracting qualified staff.

Tangentially, this weekend we were sitting around the Thanksgiving table talking about education reform. I said teachers should be paid more.

My mother-in-law, a teacher, as is my wife and my brother-in-law: "Yeah, but don't you think if you do that, you'll attract people who are only in it for the money, not for the kids?"

After I resisted the urge to shoot myself in the head, I said: "Maybe we should pay doctors less, too. Or maybe teachers should just be an all-volunteer profession."

Despite the union's sometimes unreasonable demands, on the ground a lot of teachers - and journalists - are so sold on their own nobility that they now view low pay as a selling point of the job.

OK, now non-tangentially: This is one reason that all of the testing and evaluation and incentivizing doesn't work as well as you think it will. These people are largely not incentivized by higher pay. My wife refuses to answer the question directly, but I suspect that she would work for free - seriously, for free - if it meant that she never had to be observed or evaluated or labeled again.

Do we have teachers who hang onto their jobs simply because of tenure and seniority? Yes.

Is that the only problem we have with education? No way.

What do you do about administrators who have their own ideas about what teachers should or shouldn't be doing and try to mold those who do their jobs well into doing things differently just because? Let's not pretend this doesn't happen.

What do you do about districts who decide to just cut the highest-paid teachers to save money without regards to how well they actually do their jobs? Let's not pretend this wouldn't happen.

What about who gets to decide what qualifications teachers need to have? Do you trust the superintendents in each local district to do this? The local school boards? The state government? The federal government?

What about those school districts in which school boards are still required to vote on every teacher contract, and then you get board members who have a grudge against a particular teacher and do whatever they can to get that teacher out? How do you keep that from being even easier?

And on that final note: Everyone knows darn well that happens a lot — and in most cases, I think you will find it's a parent with a "not fair to my kid" attitude than it is a teacher who isn't doing his or her job well.

Certainly the current system needs work, given that it favors long-time teachers too much and can lead to abuse. But what's the alternative and how are you going to ensure that teachers truly are properly evaluated and that you actually keep the best teachers while weeding out the ones who aren't good at what they do?

What do you do about administrators who have their own ideas about what teachers should or shouldn't be doing and try to mold those who do their jobs well into doing things differently just because? Let's not pretend this doesn't happen.

Click to expand...

What would happen?

We'd see if the administrator was right or wrong. His changes would work, or they would not work. If they work, they should be embraced, and replicated.

If they fail, the administrator should be fired.

Would that be a bad thing?

Morris816 said:

What do you do about districts who decide to just cut the highest-paid teachers to save money without regards to how well they actually do their jobs? Let's not pretend this wouldn't happen.

Click to expand...

Oh no! Imagine if teachers were subject to the same market factors faced by every other white collar worker in America.

Again, if a Principal can manage his/her budget, and be successful, more power to him/her. If firing better, higher payed teachers results in a lesser education for the kids, we should be able to measure this, and the Principal should lose his/her job as a result.

Oh no! Imagine if teachers were subject to the same market factors faced by every other white collar worker in America.

Click to expand...

Well when education is LIKE every other white collar job, then maybe we can do that.

At the college level, sure, it's a lot more possible. But you can't compare the local school system to corporate America for a lot of reasons, including the fact that local governments can't tell corporate America to begin offering its services for free to anyone and everyone the way local schools have to.

Oh no! Imagine if teachers were subject to the same market factors faced by every other white collar worker in America.

Click to expand...

Well when education is LIKE every other white collar job, then maybe we can do that.

At the college level, sure, it's a lot more possible. But you can't compare the local school system to corporate America for a lot of reasons, including the fact that local governments can't tell corporate America to begin offering its services for free to anyone and everyone the way local schools have to.

Come on, man. You aren't that dumb, are you?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what is dumb about holding teachers accountable for performance, same as any white collar worker is held accountable for his/her performance. Actuaries can, and do, assess where students ought to be given past performance, IQ, home life, etc. See if the teacher is meeting that expectation. It's actually not that hard, and there is nothing "dumb" about it.
(teachers themselves tacitly acknowledge this when they cite to articles that identify who the good teachers are. If you can figure out who the good teachers are, you can figure out who the bad teachers are).

Want better schools? Get better parents. That's the quickest and fastest way to make it happen.

Click to expand...

This is true to a large extent. It's also why the comparisons to Scandinavian schools fall flat. Until we replace out parents with Finns and Swedes, their model won't work here.

So, we're left with what we can change.

Better teachers. Longer hours. More school days. Accountability for students and teachers. These things can make a difference. Why don't we try them?

Click to expand...

I'm with you on about 99% of your education posts (see above post for example). I don't like the idea of more school days, at least not for everyone. There comes some point where I think my kids will learn more at home for at least a couple of months of the year.